Is this woman for real ? I saw that photo in a magazine yesterday and the caption said that it was from a film called “L’Avventura” by Michelangelo Antonioni ( whose "Blow Up" I had seen previously, and hadn’t quite understood). So I took L’Avventura yesterday and didn’t quite like it too, but then I wasn’t bothering much about the film – I was watching HER. Gosh, I used to think the young Catherine Deneuve was the best in the unreachable, blonde-with-a-faraway-look category. Monica Vitti displaces her with the gentleness of an American football forward shoving out the defence. Those eyes !

I got the point about L’Avventura ( existential malaise, people drifting into a relationship) but one or two things were not working for me in that film. I didn’t even finish the movie. Undeterred, I took L’Eclisse ( M.V. and Alain Delon) and find it a better attempt at saying the same thing. By comparison, I can see what puts me off with L’Avventura:

(i) it’s not made quite clear, at the beginning of the film, what Monica Vitti's position is in the group of bored rich people with whom she goes out on the boat. She’s Anna’s friend, but I have the impression she doesn’t fit in. She seems too balanced, too normal compared to the rest of the group who wear their ennui around them like a silk scarf, and quip wisecracks at each other like in a 1930’s upper class comedy gone sour. At one point later on, she even remarks that she’s had a “sensible childhood, a poor one”. That feeling of oddness stayed with me throughout the film, I kept expecting one of the female nasties to turn around at any point and tell her with a charming smile : “Well dear, when Anna was around , we tolerated you as her old University buddy with whom she still hung out, for some unfathomable reason of hers. But now that she’s off to wherever, maybe you should crawl back to your middle class slum. You may fill your handbag with the chocolates, as a souvenir”.

(ii) the moment where she and the boyfriend start to feel attracted to each other on the island ( It’s in the morning, when she’s washing her face in a pool of rainwater accumulated in the rocks) is pretty unconvincing. Even allowing for the fact that I’m watching a modernist movie where people are not supposed to act like in a conventional love story, the actors don’t look terribly convinced by what they’re doing. Come on, it’s less than 24 hours after Anna’s disappearance. She was that guy’s lover, and Monica’s good friend. Monica and that guy never felt attracted before to each other. There’s been nothing by way of erotic tension which has built up between them. Ok, they’ve spent a night together in a hut, but the whole thing's going too fast to be believable. Building on the questions I was asking myself at the beginning of the film, about her position in that group, I even wondered whether her allowing him to kiss her wasn’t by way of grabbing Anna’s rich boyfriend. I got into a “Talented Mr Ripley” red herring !

(iii) That guy ( I can’t remember his name) is such a DUD. In L’Eclisse, you have the same theme of the woman who wanders into a relationship with a shallow man, but come on, it’s Alain Delon. He’s smashingly handsome and bursting with vitality, you can understand why a woman would feel attracted to him even while she senses that he’s just a materialistic young stock broker. But that guy in L’Avventura, gosh, he’s got such a flat screen presence ! Watching him, I kept telling myself “Ok, he’s just the actor, forget about him, focus on the point Antonioni is making about people aimlessly getting into a relationship….. Or look at the scenery, nice buildings”.To be fair towards him, he was so dull that I was even able to replace him in my imagination, in that nice scene where they’re kissing in a meadow ( Ah the warm scent of her hair) . Can’t do that with Delon, when he’s on the screen, he’s the boss.

I think that even when you’re doing a modernist movie, you still have to follow some conventional aesthetic rules. Actually, maybe the fact that you are doing away with some conventions means that, in order to sustain the interest of the viewer, you have to compensate in some of the other conventions. One of those rules is that people like to watch beautiful, charismatic people on screen. For example, if you’re doing an arty, moody meditation on the film medium itself, like Goddard’s Le Mépris, watching Bardot’s sexy curves and Michel Piccoli’s impeccable acting does help one to digest the weight ideas. The music in that film also is quite poignant. ( Actually, I find that film unbearable, but that’s because to watch that couple break apart, while my wife is away, gives me the blues. I couldn’t finish it , because I knew that Bardot would end up with the nightmarish Jack Palance).

Talking of conventions, that’s one thing I don’t like with much of modern art…. It does away with the “art” bit altogether.

Note: the photo was taken from Wikipedia's article on L'Avventura.